Accenture-A-New-Era-For-Retail

The future of cloudcomputing in retailTwo primary drivers — competitionwith online pure-plays and customerdemand for a seamless experience— will motivate increasingly fasteradoption rates for cloud in retail. As ourrecent seamless retail survey showed,customers want the same products,pricing and promotions in store andonline. They expect to be recognized fortheir loyalty and receive personalizedoffers regularly. And they want aseamless rather than a channel-specificexperience of the brand.We see large retailers embracingthis concept — witness Walmart’sinterest in “winning in ecommerce bygiving customers a seamless shoppingexperience through mobile and online”and Target’s search “for a broad,seamless experience across allretail formats.”So far, retailers have focused on theeasier capabilities. Now it is time touse cloud computing to tackle theharder work. Building these seamlesscapabilities will lead to collaborationacross retailers and with existingand emerging third parties. Webelieve, one reason for this trendis that retailers will change theirunderstanding of what differentiatesthem in the marketplace; as technologyinfrastructure becomes a service,retailers will develop best practicesas collaborators, such as is happeningin the pharmaceutical industry.Further, we believe that efficientinnovators will win the seamless game.The pace of change will not slowdown. Consumers will continue to bequick to change their priorities andtherefore their expectations of retailercapabilities. The cloud gives retailersthe easily scalable resources theyneed to innovate using a consumptionbased model — and provides resourcebandwidth, as employees are freed fromtasks moved to the cloud.In order to address their customers’demand for seamless service, traditionalretailers need to seriously evaluate theiroperational capabilities. They must beseamless in terms of buying, placementand promotion of merchandise. And thatmeans having inventory visibility, aswell as developing pricing strategiesand managing metrics and incentivesacross all channels. We see thefollowing trends:33